5 great platforms for online learning

If you have ever considered distance learning, these educational platforms may have just what you’re looking for

online-learning-platforms

There is no denying that online learning has become popular in recent years. Advocates of this alternative educational experience argue that its rise in popularity is closely linked to soaring higher ed tuition costs.

Moreover, in the case of the massive open online course (MOOC), the advantages of a free, quality education which participants can receive in the comfort of their home – provided that they have an internet connection – are very appealing.…Read More

The technology that prevents ‘hotbeds of fraud’ in higher ed

Fraud in test taking and student loans can threaten the very existence of online colleges and universities

fraudManually documenting student identities before they take an online exam or receive student loan payments are labor intensive and very costly for schools coping with stagnating technology budgets.

Ensuring students are who they say they are, using the decidedly old-school approach, is also an inefficient system that has fallen short in many online college programs over the past decade as web-based learning grows.

The problem of identity fraud has become so pervasive in higher education that officials from the U.S. Department of Education have issued suggestions — and warnings — to colleges.…Read More

The 30 best online programs for veterans

Among federal crackdown of companies serving student veterans, U.S. News and World Report releases rankings of best online programs

veterans-online-educationThe treatment of veteran and military students has been in the news a lot lately — but for all the wrong reasons.

In May, student lender Sallie Mae agreed to pay more than $97 million in settlements to resolve allegations that it charged members of the military “excessive rates” on student loans.

Several departments, including the Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, alleged that Sallie Mae violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by improperly obtaining default judgements and by imposing interest rates that exceeded the 6 percent allowed by federal law.…Read More

Why it’s either death or moving online

Local student shortages, demand for flexibility are pushing smaller colleges to move online

online-colleges-learningColby-Sawyer College is a classic New England school, with 176 years of undergraduate history amid 200 acres of brick buildings and tree-lined walks, nestled in a pretty New Hampshire town.

So why would anybody want to get a Colby-Sawyer degree via web browser, never touching the campus?

To save about $100,000, for one thing: The school’s first online-only bachelor’s degree programs will cost about one-quarter as much as a degree “on the ground.” It will also require a lot less commuting and provide more flexible schedules.…Read More

Innovation corner: New freedom with online learning

Nothing says moving into the future like the flexibility customization can provide

innovation

The base level of technological savvy has surely risen on college campuses over the past half decade, and with that rise has come growing expectations for flexibility in institution’s online learning platforms.

The static nature of learning management systems from the early and mid-2000s for years irked educators, campus technologists, and students who said the web-based learning experience was hindered by the decidedly inflexible platforms that left little or no room for customization.…Read More

Busting online learning myths

For the last year, we’ve been working with Digital Learning Now! (DLN), a national campaign supported by ExcelinEd, to tackle eight big topics at the intersection of digital learning and the Common Core, Education Week reports. Today we released the eighth paper in the DLN Smart Series — ” Online Learning: Myths, Reality & Promise.”  The paper brings together regular Smart Series authors from DLN and Getting Smart with co-author Susan Patrick of iNACOL – the leading advocate for online, blended, and competency-based learning. The Smart Series covers topics such as preparing for online assessments, creating comprehensive student learner profiles, implementing blended learning, improving teaching conditions and careers, and funding the shift to digital learning. As we’ve released the papers over the last several months, we’ve been surprised to learn that many of the same outdated myths still persist. Susan Patrick, iNACOL CEO, agrees. “From its advent, online learning has grown because of its potential to increase student access to innovative teachers personalizing learning and individualizing instruction, without the restrictive barriers of place and time,” said Patrick. “Confronting the myths that persist around what online learning is – and isn’t – is key.

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How online learning is reinventing college

Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are not automatically required to go to class. So you notice when, on a lousy midwinter evening in a driving 45-degree rain, 98 show up at Room 46-3002 in Singleton Auditorium, the Christian Science Monitor reports. They come not for the free Thai takeout (though it’s appreciated), but because everyone in Eric Lander’s introductory biology course is needed. In person. Ilana Porter, an ebullient first-year student from New Jersey, doesn’t mind, and even dumps her plate of noodles to be on time. “We want good seats,” she says, and secures a spot in the front row. Dr. Lander, a MacArthur “genius” and a leader of the Human Genome Project, is the sort of iconic professor you expect to find at the front of a lecture hall at an eminent university. In Ms. Porter’s pared down parlance, he is “legit.” So much else here, though, is experimental. That’s because “Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life” is also a Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, offered by edX, the MIT-Harvard University nonprofit, free of charge to anyone in the world with an internet connection.

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How online class about online learning failed miserably

In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category, here’s an amusing piece about the failure of a MOOC (massive open online course) that was designed to teach more than 40,000 students the fundamentals of how to create an online course, the Washington Post reports. It was written by Jill Barshay, a contributing editor to The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, non-partisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, an independently funded unit of Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been a radio and print reporter for two decades.This appeared on The Hechinger Report’s Digital blog

Click here for the full story

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Report: Credit-hour model outdated, inefficient

Fourteen percent of students are full-time students living on campus.

Colleges and universities are holding back a competency-based credit hour system in higher education, even as the federal government has signaled support for the nontraditional credit-earning model, according to a report that supports the growing opposition to the credit hour status quo.

The New America Foundation’s “Cracking The Credit Hour” is the latest critique of the long-held belief that college credit should be judged solely on hours spent in a classroom, whether it’s in person or online.

Penned by the foundation’s director of higher education, Amy Laitinen, the foundation’s report points out that traditional universities have stuck with the seat-time credit hour model despite the U.S. Department of Education’s definition of credit hours, which was based on 1,200 comments from educators and includes three ways to measure learning outcomes.…Read More

17 more top universities offer free cyber courses

Coursera will offer more than 200 courses from 33 institutions.

Seventeen more leading universities in the U.S. and abroad will start offering free online courses through the online education platform Coursera, the company said Sept. 19.

The announcement by Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera underscores the rapid expansion of so-called MOOCs, or massive open online courses, that are reshaping the higher-education landscape.

Coursera, a for-profit company started by two computer science professors at Stanford University, now will offer more than 200 courses from 33 institutions that are open to anyone with internet access. Officials said the website has registered 1.3 million students around the world.…Read More

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